The highs and lows of 2003

As the old story goes, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. We're talking about the year that's almost over, in terms of technology. It was the year when email services at Telstra spat the dummy big-time and the year when spam laws that meant little or nothing were passed by parliament.

It was also the year when lawsuits and patents reared their ugly heads more and more, with vendors resorting to the courts more than their software in order to boost their bottom line.

Our readers, however, stayed the same. They badgered, harassed, shouted and praised us at the right times. They read and they reacted, they let us know in no uncertain terms when we fouled up and were quick to cheer us when we were right.

It seemed only correct that we should leave the sorting of the highs and lows for the year to them. Here goes:

Network consultant Benjamin Robson:

"The high point was Internode's/Agile Communications' deployment of their own DSLAM
devices in regional and rural communities of Australia. Agile has
broken its dependence on Telstra for access to Telstra owned and driven
DSLAMs, resulting in a more efficient and more affordable IP experience
for regional and rural communities. Breaking Telstra's monopoly over
the last mile connection for Australian Internet users is one of the
most important issues facing broadband availability in Australia.

"The low point was the Federal Government's attempt at regulation of
internet activities, and its inability to develop and legislate
enforceable laws. Just about all recent legislation to come from our
parliamentary system in relation to the internet appears to be
deliberately crafted in a manner that cannot be technically enforced.

"Either the technology doesn't exist to actually achieve what they want,
or it relies on conceptual issues that allow for as many experts to be
found for one interpretation as another. One day we may have a
communications minister in Australia who actually knows what the
internet is, as opposed to the proverbial 'little old lady' who goes in
to the computer store to buy a box of the internet."

For Mike Yee the "hands down coolest product of the year was the G2 iPod - this thing can even be a
make up mirror!!! I guess what's expected will be more games, a colour screen and what the heck - turn it into a phone!"

And his "tear to the eye tale": Nintendo's GameCube getting slaughtered by another Microsoft Product ("one step closer to world domination, I suppose")
and technology that seems a decade old (PS2). "I guess the price is right now...(It's cheaper than the portables GBA and GBA SP)."

His biggest surprise: The take-off of coloured phones. "I was very sceptical when
Siemens started doing colour screens. What's the point, I asked myself. Then
came connectivity games, integrated cameras and video conferencing with 3G."

Small business owner Andrew Greig:

"The high points for me were Sun Microsystems' coup in obtaining a contract with the People's Republic of China to supply 200,000,000 OS licences, which in one stroke has caused Bill Gates to book his pants into the drycleaners, and moved Linux into the "main player" level of the game; the City of Munich which said, 'Gee, Bill, 20 percent is a good offer ... but no thanks'; the full release of OpenOffice.org1.1 for Linux and that other OS and the Police Credit Co-op taking note of comments made and coming up with a W3C compliant banking site quickly - one which is easy to browse on any platform.

"The lowest point was the fact that Westpac Bank, with all of its resources, still could not get its website right after being alerted to difficulties in browsing the site. According to experts the coding just needed to be tidied up on a couple of pages, so I suspect laziness is behind it."

Anthony Rumble, owner of Everythinglinux:

"SCO is certainly the worst thing to happen for Linux in 2003.. thats
for sure.. (from a FUD perspective). The second most stupid thing is Redhat pulling out of the consumer market
(especially in the Asia Pacific). Redhat will work it out, in about 6 to 12 months from now, that their
enterprise sales were being driven by the branding and marketing hype
that their consumer products generated. Take that away, and people
are going to flock to the next loudest/biggest group.. (and that could
be Novell).

"On the hardware side (the worst thing was) LG's CD-ROM drives, that were affected by a last minute kernel patch
(on Mandrake) that detected if the drive supported packet writing which on LG's drives caused them to erase their firmware... And, of course, LG blamed Linux.. even though a sudden 1.01 version of their firmware came out in short order that amazingly fixed the problem."

Michael Green:

My low point for the year would definently have to be SCO suing IBM, and threatening to sue anyone with anything to do with Linux. Sounds very much like a dying company trying desperately to find a new revenue stream.

Tech consultant Leon Brooks:

"There have been a few single events during 2003 which are high and low points, but the peaks and troughs generally don't give a very good picture of the industry as a whole. That said, I noticed that:

"The price of a lot of IT gear has plummeted during the last 12 months;

"Open Source seems to have hit some kind of critical mass, possibly helped by cheap hardware (this exposes software costs more) and exemplified by the ACT's recent FOSS-friendly bill, supported by almost every MP involved;

"The fiaSCO has dominated IT news, and while many knowlegeable people laugh themselves to tears at The SCO Group's antics, a few fall for their insanity and a lot of time has been wasted by a lot of people (like GrokLaw's, spent in exposing the charade so well);

"Spam is flooding out our email and getting rapidly worse;

"Linux Conference Australia 2003 in Perth was excellent, and I'm looking forward to the Adelaide one in January;

"Everybody brings us happiness, and in Senator Alston's case it was as he departed from an IT portfolio."

"If there's anything I've learned about computers in the last 20 years,
it's that they don't work very well. Software is complex. Hooking up
hundreds, thousands or millions of complex bits of equipment running complex
software into a huge network makes the whole thing mind-bogglingly complex.

"Any electronic voting system is a huge danger to democracy. As we've
seen, even open-source systems can be commandeered - consider the recent
brk() bug in Linux that resulted in several compromised high-profile systems.

"The best voting system uses paper ballots and pens. Everyone understands
a physical ballot. Anyone can see physical evidence of his or her vote.
It's hard to tamper with paper-based elections on a massive scale without
being detected.

"And yet many bright people in the United States are agonising over how to
make a fair, transparent e-voting system. The answer is simple: Don't
even try. Democracy is too important to be left up to technology."

Paul McRae of email security company MessageLabs:

"The worst of 2003? The convergence of virus and spam:
"What's the best way to get my spam to market?
"How do I make sure I can exploit someone else's server, bandwidth, email connection?
"How do I maximise the coverage of my multi-million mailout?
"Hey, here's an idea, why don't I send a virus to create a vulnerability, then exploit the vulnerability to send the spam?
"Anecdotally, the spam increase resulted in much better returns and encouraged growth of the convergence problem."

Cristian Lita:

IMAP changed my life. Hearing about a review in the SMH Tech section about Fastmail.fm, I
checked out the website, promptly created my guest account, and had a go.

It changed my life forever, as now I know what email should be like. I
forked over my hard earned cash for a 2 year full account, and now I have
a decent email account that does everything I need and more. I now access
my email from any machine with internet access, and it stores all my mail
and contacts online. So organised, so efficient. Now I don't have to
change my email address as often as I change a pair of socks.

John O'Keefe: (no highs, it seems):

"I don't want my G4. My G4 Mac costs more than a mortgage to service. Especially with high Mac hardware and software prices. After 2 years and 4 OS reloads I've realised my hard drive controller is going kaput. No money and no job mean no working Mac. Although XP is no show against OSX. As a postscript, I wash windows cheap."

Mozz O'Sullivan:
"I deal with a lot of people's personal computers at college and I would make the following observations for 2003:

Positive:HP - replaced a faulty printer even though it was outside warranty
Compaq - in two separate incidents upgraded laptops that were deemed faulty
Small ISPs - who continue to deliver good service for a fair price! (AussieISP is great for Sydney users)

Negative:Dell - helpdesk informed individual that his faulty keyboard was caused by a virus
Dell - faulty touch pads on a series of their laptops - minimal service
Fujitsu - a series of hard drives have failed and they all (14) but one have been Fujitsu brand. When queried on this, Fujitsu has refused to answer any requests.

IT consultant Andrew Tune:

"Software vendors, especially large ones, continue to astonish with their
abysmal performance when it comes to security - they behave as if they
neither know nor care, but the truth is they probably _do_ know.

"The continued performance of security vendors selling product where
services are needed - because they're easier to sell and customers
are gullible - has to be right up there in terms of the worst of 2003.

"But I think the cake is taken by the Australian Government's anti-spam
legislation: a misframed and inadequate approach if ever there was
one: a threat to spam in name only. And deserving of a side award:
for the most unconscious irony in the name of a piece of legislation
in 2003. What should be (and should be called) the Anti-spam Act is,
with its ridiculous exemptions, really the Spam Act, and that's exactly
what they've called it!

"The best of 2003 is probably the increasing trend towards integrated
approaches by security vendors. Everyone and his dog is jumping on that
particular bandwagon, and for good reason. Most people rely on firewalls
and anti-virus systems to protect them. Those defences have been
ineffective against the majority of the last 10 or so major internet
security issues. As the industry moves towards integrated systems, users
will start to finally see results for the money they're paying, and that
will hopefully be the highlight of 2004 for IT Security."